FedUp? FedEx workers look to unionize

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Stephen Roth

Staff Writer

At least every other day for two weeks, Bob Kutchko marched with United Parcel Service workers on the picket line outside the UPS terminal in Lenexa, waving to motorists and brandishing a sign supporting the Teamsters strike.

Kutchko doesn't work for UPS and he doesn't pay Teamster dues. In fact, he's a part-time courier for parcel carrier rival Federal Express, a company with no union ties among its ground-based work force.

But Kutchko, 42, is part of a group of FedEx workers in Kansas City and throughout the nation that wants to start a Teamsters-affiliated union at the profitable Memphis, Tenn.-based company. For almost two years the workers, who operate under the banner of "FedUp," have handed out literature and organized picnics in an attempt to generate support among colleagues for a union.

The process has been slow-going at times, but Kutchko thinks the UPS strike might wake FedEx's 80,000 workers up to similar issues at their own company. Naturally, he was ecstatic to learn his friends in brown had won a favorable settlement with UPS on Aug. 19.

Labor experts agreed that FedEx might be the next target for what has become a unified and aggressive Teamsters movement under union president Ron Carey. Despite recent wage increases, FedEx couriers and sorters make less than their UPS counterparts; full-timers at UPS average about $20 an hour. Like UPS, FedEx also has a large cadre of part-time workers, some of whom complain of difficulties attaining full-time status.

"FedEx might be a ripe target for organizing efforts," said Douglas McCabe, a professor of labor and industrial relations at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Judy Ancel, director of the Institute of Labor Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said she believes the Teamsters' success at UPS will lead to aggressive union organizing at FedEx.

"There's already a union movement at FedEx. I think this can't help but boost it," she said.

FedEx officials downplay the significance of FedUp among their rank and file. Company spokeswoman Sonja Whitemon said statistics show most FedEx employees are happy with their jobs.

"We do annual surveys of our employees and the overwhelming majority say they are very satisfied with Federal Express' management philosophy," she said.

Whitemon said less than 40 percent of the company's work force is part time and that part-time and full-time workers receive virtually the same hourly wages and benefits package. The company makes full-time employment available to part timers on a regular basis, she said.

But Joyce Krist, a 13-year FedEx veteran who formerly worked as a FedEx courier and now is an office worker in Kansas City, said part-time workers don't get the same sick leave or life insurance benefits as full timers. She said many part timers work more than 40 hours a week and are asked to do jobs they aren't qualified or paid to do. A handler, for instance, might be asked to drive a truck, she said.

Kutchko has worked three years as a part-time courier making about $12 an hour. The top wage for full-time couriers, he said, is about $15 an hour. Though his wife works as a registered nurse and he enjoys time spent at home with his two daughters, Kutchko said he is frustrated by his inability to advance at FedEx.

"I consider myself one of those involuntary part timers. I don't have a choice at FedEx," he said.

Krist said she's still proud to be a FedEx employee, but added that the company over the years has changed in the way it treats its workers.

"When I came in, it was a people-oriented company and they stressed that. What we see now is unfair treatment of employees," she said.

Kutchko thinks the Teamsters could change that. But there are obstacles to unionization.

Federal Express currently operates under the Railway Labor Act, which requires that unions organize on a national rather than regional level. The Teamsters lost a battle to organize regionally when the National Labor Relations Board ruled in June that the board had no jurisdiction over Federal Express employees.

FedEx is probably two years away from a national vote on whether or not to join the Teamsters, Kutchko said. At least 30 percent of the employees at each FedEx office must approve a vote on the union before the vote can actually take place. In places like Chicago, support among FedEx workers is very strong. In other cities, Kansas City among them, the movement is still growing, Kutchko said.

The union movement could already be having an effect on corporate policy at FedEx. Dennis Speak, an organizer for Teamsters Local 41 who works closely with Kansas City's FedUp proponents, is convinced FedEx CEO Fred Smith approved a 3 percent pay increase in April to quell worker rumblings about organizing.

But some FedEx workers have been appeased by the pay raises, Kutchko said.

"There are some people who said, `Hey, I got the raise, why should I give it away to union dues?'" he said. "What we try to say to them is, `If a union movement can accomplish this, think what we can do if we actually have a union.'"

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